Two Victories Against Israel Lobby Go Unreported by Marin I-J

From a Marin County CA meeting (Marin County Confidential)

By Eva Chrysanthe, excerpted from Marin’s Newsletter

This month, the Marin Independent-Journal‘s education reporter, Keri Brenner, missed two of the biggest educational stories of the year, both involving serious setbacks for the Israel lobby. In both stories, Jewish anti-Zionist activists from Marin County had played a small but important role.

This failure to report is part of a pattern. In line with the pro-Israel politics of its owner, Alden Global Capital, the I-J has willfully painted the County’s Jewish population as unanimously pro-Israel.

The first of the two bombshell education stories that the I-J refused to report is the July 3 vote by the California Teachers Association to reject the Legislative Jewish Caucus’ pro-censorship, anti-teacher Assembly Bill 715. This was a tectonic shift, as the CTA, led by President David Goldberg, is one of the most powerful unions in the state, representing 300,000 workingclass teachers.

AB 715, while supposedly written to combat “antisemitism”, would in reality establish a McCarthyesque hunt for “dissident” teachers who dared to criticize Israeli policy. Given the existing targeting of educators in colleges and high schools for even mild criticism of Israel, AB 715 was not well received by the rank and file members of the CTA, who were expected to show up in large numbers for the July 9 Senate Education Committee hearing.

The hearing was canceled with less than 24 hour notice, as the bill was not expected to survive the hearing. And so the pro-censorship bill amounted to a self-inflicted wound by the Israel lobby, as it galvanized and united its opposition.

But the CTA vote came only after grassroots organizers (including many Jewish residents from the Marin chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace), had repeatedly appeared in Sacramento to oppose the legislation. Until the vote, there had been a sense of dread amongst educators about the likelihood of AB 715 passing, as the bill had the support of the LJC and the federally funded Israel lobby. (See Jewish Insider article on the latest $94 million in federal grants provided to the ADL and other pro-Israel Jewish organizations, linked here.)

As many had previously reported, AB 715 was crafted as the Legislative Jewish Caucus’ “fix” after the LJC’s previous anti-teacher bill, AB 1468, had to be scrapped due to opposition from educators and civil rights organizations. And AB 1468 was itself written as a “fix” for yet an earlier failed LJC bill, AB 2918.

Note the pattern: Given a new infusion of federal funding to the Israel lobby, there is no incentive for the LJC to stop writing pro-censorship bills in an effort to exhaust the workingclass opposition made up of teachers and civil rights groups, most of whom cannot regularly appear in Sacramento.

The LJC is led by State Senator Scott Weiner and routinely garners great support from the ADL, JPAC, JCRC Bay Area, and SF JCF. At least some, if not all, of these pro-Israel groups just received hefty portions of a recent $94 million Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant to fight alleged “antisemitism”, with the potential for another $120 million to be released later. Under the ADL definition of antisemitism, any mild criticism of Israeli policy, or even mild support of Palestinian rights to exist, can be considered “antisemitic”.

All of the Legislative Jewish Caucus’ censorship bills had been strenuously opposed by JVP Marin, whose members regularly rearranged their work schedules to carpool to Sacramento either to testify in opposition and/or to lobby legislators against the bills. In Sacramento, they were joined by CAIR and AROC; there is a close relationship between these and other activist groups in support of Palestinians.

But these Jewish Marinites — and this solidarity between Jews and Muslims on support for the right of educators to teach about Palestinian history — are never included in Keri Brenner’s education reporting, or in any of the I-J reporting at all.

Bombshell Two: NEA breaks with ADL

Three days later came another bombshell, also disregarded by the I-J’s Keri Brenner: the National Education Association, a three-million-member organization, which includes public school teachers in Marin County, voted to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This tectonic break was reported in considerable detail by Emmaia Gelman, whose earlier exposé of the ADL likely helped inform the NEA’s 7,000-member representative body.

Gelman’s reporting on the recent NEA vote includes the detail that the ADL and NEA membership have a history of conflict: “In 1982, when the NEA joined with the National Anti-Klan Committee to develop curriculum on white supremacy, the ADL denouced it as too critical of the U.S. state’s role in racism. The NEA curriculum was never implemented, and the ADL’s own ‘tolerance” curriculum supplanted it.”

Gelman also reports that it was Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza that compelled NEA members to create an Educators for Palestine caucus in 2024 that helped dispel old myths conflating Israel with Judaism.

Fighting AB 715 — and the ADL’s counterattack:

Between the CTA and the NEA votes, a one-two punch was delivered from the working class to one of the most powerful lobbies in the country. By July 8, the hearing for AB 715 had been canceled and the bill does not look likely to be revived.

Gelman was careful to note that the vote was designated by the NEA legal team as a boycott. That allowed the ADL to counter-attack in a July 15 letter to the NEA, reported here by Marcy Winograd. Curiously, the JCRC Bay Area (SF JCRC), which has been in full support of AB 715 and is usually on board with all things ADL, is not a signatory to the ADL letter. Neither is SF JCRC’s recently formed political action committee, Bay Area Jewish Action, about which little is publicly known. In fact, very few Bay Area Jewish institutions appear to have signed onto the ADL letter.

Is it a shift or just a temporary recalibration? Or is it a message from other pro-Israel Jewish groups that it’s time for a change in ADL leadership? Are they signaling that Director Jonathan Greenblatt has served his purpose, and the ADL might fare better with a new face?

Nevertheless, the ADL was able to pressure NEA Director Becky Pringle to revoke the July 6 vote, a process that promises to get messy.

4. Hearing for David J. Margoliash, who Attacked Novato’s Islamic Center of North Marin, Is Scheduled For This Wednesday

David Margoliash, whose brutal physical attack on members of the Islamic Center of North Marin was serially whitewashed by the Alden-Capital-owned Marin Independent-Journal, is scheduled to be back in court on Wednesday morning. It may once again be continued, but I plan to attend, anyway. The attack was never investigated as a hate crime by the Novato Police.

5. When a Church, Rather than a Mosque, Was Attacked in Novato Last Week, Hate Crimes Charges Were Immediately Added

The hearing for the woman alleged to have committed an act of arson on a Novato church property last week is scheduled for Thursday. I plan to attend. Worth pointing out that hate crimes charges were immediately added to her case, even though the defendant, a tiny 61-year-old white female, appears to share the same faith as the church where she is alleged to have committed the arson.

That is a stark contrast to how favorably Margoliash was treated by Novato Police (including the very unusual one-day “get-out-of-jail-free-card” Margoliash was granted to help Novato Police look for the gun he stashed) after his assault on the Islamic Center. The highly unusual nature of Judge Simmons’ granting of the day pass, went largely unquestioned by the Marin Independent-Journal editorial board.

The same week of the apparently Christian-on-Christian attack on the Novato Church, Israel continued to bomb Gaza’s last remaining Christian churches, a reality ignored by most “Christian” supporters of Israel. Here’s a clip showing parishioners at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza barely flinching as Israeli bombs hit nearby due to the constancy of Israel’s attacks. This occurred just days before three Christian Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs that struck the same church, prompting an emergency visit by Cardinal Pizzaballa. Two of the Christians killed by Israel’s strike on the Church were Greek Orthodox Christians who were guests of the small Holy Family church when it was bombed. (Apologies for low quality video, I will try to upload better quality tomorrow.)

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